The backstory was complete and utter bullshit of course, but that didn’t matter. What mattered to the Potentate was that his handpicked puppet would be seen as something more than a mere mortal, a man who had, at least for a while, put the fear of God in the all-powerful Syndicate. A man in other words, who was not to be trifled with.
He’d been the Viceroy for four years now, so long that sometimes he struggled to recall his given name. But he always remembered the name of this woman. Oh, yes, he remembered Quinn. She was gone now, disappeared and presumed dead, although the Potentate had made cryptic remarks about people who were once lost being found.
He thought about her mostly in the mornings, when he would come to a window in his quarters and stare down at the city beneath him and try to will away the pain that he felt in his jaw.
The fire had taken most of his cheek and the soft flesh of a portion of his gums. Without proper medical or dental care, an infection had set in. A good portion of his teeth had quickly gone bad, rotting down to the sockets, the nerves fried, the pain nearly overwhelming. Rane winced, remembering how he’d pressed the edge of a heated pry bar against the wound to cauterize it, nearly going mad from the pain. Tears stabbed the corners of his eyes which flapped open to see the alien medic signaling him that it was all over.
He was unstrapped from the chair, rose and exited through a side door. He hopped onto the walkway that was reserved for him and a few select others and rode it toward a room that contained his personal observation deck. Exiting the walkway, he moved through an automatic door and across a foyer that was garishly decorated in bright colors and rich fabrics, a style that he felt was suitable for a man of his station.
He crossed the foyer in several steps and strode onto the deck which resembled a German sun wheel. The deck was silver and black and rotated ever so slightly every sixth minute. He placed his hands on a dais that controlled a battery of machines that beamed reams of information into the air: the weather conditions, the location of various armies and vessels, the status of ongoing combat operations.
Using his index finger, he sifted through the information, examining images from various cities all over the world, footage of the Syndicate’s increasing militarization of most major cities.
He observed vast armories and warehouses filled with soldiers and every conceivable weapon of war. There were bunkers and airfields lined with battle craft, drones, and mechanized fighting machines of every shape and size. He smiled and then turned his attention to images from the ground below, the Green Zone in Washington, D.C., the situs of the bureaucracy that now controlled the alien empire.
This was the very same spot he’d been standing in when the resistance had attempted one last ditch (and ill-fated) effort to overthrow the Syndicate. They’d launched a series of coordinated attacks across the country on the longest night of the year, the winter solstice.
Using hand-crafted mechs and even suicide bombers, the resistance had swarmed alien bases in the dead of night only to be met with overwhelming firepower. Thanks to a small army of informants, Rane had known about the uprising many months in advance and was able to bring the hammer down, particularly on the local insurgents who’d had the misfortune of attacking during a blizzard. An army of two-hundred mechs and twelve-thousand crack Syndicate soldiers had made mincemeat of the guerrillas whose stiff, blue-bloated bodies soon littered the streets of downtown Washington, D.C.
He peered down on the streets below in real-time and watched people, his subjects (because that’s what they were) scurry about on the streets like insects, oblivious to the fact that they were being monitored. An electronic chirp arrested his attention. He turned and waved a hand as a door opened to reveal a human, a man with a shag of brown hair, wrapped in Syndicate armor. An intelligence officer. A collaborator. One of the many humans who’d decided to throw in with the aliens after the Solstice Offensive had failed.
The intel officer saluted Rane and held up his hands in the manner of a penitent readying to receive communion. He pressed his palms together and a spiral of green light knifed out of a small device wrapped to the man’s wrist. The light rose up between the two men, and in the middle of it were images. Rane had always hated the quality of the holograms. His eyesight was poor, but he refused to have his vision fixed, fearing that it would be construed as a sign of weakness. He squinted and saw what appeared to be the wreckage of some alien craft in the swirling light.
“Where?” Rane asked.
“The plains, sir,” the intel officer replied, referencing a euphemism Rane himself had come up with, a reference to the mass graves that held the bodies of the resistance fighters.
“I hadn’t heard that we’d lost a ship,” Rane said.
“There were actually two ships, sir,” the officer answered. He then manipulated his fingers until the images narrowed and zoomed in on what was obviously two crash sites. The images narrowed again, focusing on a piece of twisted debris. A tail-section from a broken ship that was marked with Syndicate runes.
It took several seconds to register, but then Rane’s eyes nearly leaped from their sockets. He recognized the markings. God in Heaven, they had lost a ship. But it was a ship that hadn’t been heard from for six years! How many times had he been briefed on the issue of the time ship? It was a pet project of the Potentate who was convinced that one day, the ship would reappear.
“Did anyone survive the crash?” Rane asked.
“That’s unclear at this juncture, sir, although one of the drones spotted footprints leading away from the site.”
The images changed a final time to an overhead shot of the crash site and the surrounding lands.
“If there were survivors, they’re headed toward the favelas aren’t they?” Rane mused. “They’re going into the ghetto.”
The intel officer looked up quizzically and Rane waved his hand, causing the images to flicker and vanish. “I want a full briefing in one hour,” he said. The intel officer saluted and exited the room. Rane spun, his mind reeling. His desire to tell the Potentate the good news was tempered by the notion that perhaps he should wait.
He recalled a quote from law school attributed to Woodrow Wilson. That ‘all things come to them who wait, provided they know what they’re waiting for.’ Rane knew exactly what he was waiting for, the reemergence of the survivors from the crash of the time ship.
He returned to the window and peered down on the city again, realizing that he needed to bide his time, at least for a while. He would send out a team to investigate, and hope that one, perhaps all, of the survivors would be stupid enough to reveal themselves.
That, of course, included the one person he very much wanted to see again. His old friend Quinn. She’d been on the ship hadn’t she? He prayed that she was still alive so that he could help her meet a painful death.
19
The Green Zone
Quinn’s hand trembled as she peered up at the holographic face in the sky. She’d been standing as still as a statue for more than seven minutes, her thoughts completely disordered. It was him, wasn’t it? The man she’d killed back on the bridge.
“Ugly mother ain’t he?” Barrows said, nudging Quinn.
“W-who is he?” she stammered, even though she knew the answer.
“The man hisself,” Barrows replied. “The Duke of D.C. The Viceroy.”
Milo and Hayden flanked Quinn, examining the holographic face, the wall, the fortress.
“What’s on the other side of the wall?” Milo asked.
“The Green Zone,” Barrows said. “The Emerald City. The coop for the fat cats and their collaborators. You gotta have that code just to get into that joint,” Barrows continued, jabbing a finger at his open palm.
Hayden’s gaze hopped to Barrows. “And the people that ain’t got that code?”
“You mean us civilians?” Barrows asked, smirking. “The ninety-nine point nine percent? Well, it’s like it’s always been right? We’re left out here by our lonesome to suck on it.�
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“That why you turned to a life of crime?”
“Man’s gotta have a vocation, don’t he?” Barrows replied with a wink before spinning on his heels and continuing through the camp. Quinn and the others followed, weaving between clots of refugees.
They moved past lean-tos and houses constructed from scrap and long rows of soiled tents. Quinn stopped and peered through an open tent flap. There were dozens of people inside, splayed on the ground. Some of them were using what looked like inhalers. She watched several of them take hits from the inhalers, their eyes rolling back, their bodies wracked with spasms.
And hovering in the air over the users was the static, holographic image of what looked like a half-human face. Another man in a white robe roamed the space, shouting, gesturing at the face in the air. Those on the ground raised their arms as if in prayer. Quinn stared at what looked like a cross between a drug den and a religious revival. A whistle sounded and she looked sideways to see Barrows gesturing for her and the others to double time it.
Several minutes later, Barrows had led everyone to a low-slung, lopsided building made of plywood and building scrap that was perched precariously on a series of wooden treads aside the edge of the fence that encircled a good portion of the barrio.
The building had a single window, a tin-punched roof studded with several skylights and a chimney that was belching gray smoke, its wooden walls covered with the same symbol Quinn had seen before: the letter z turned on its side with a dagger through the middle of it.
“You gonna tell me what that is now?” Quinn asked Barrows, bobbing her head in the direction of the graffiti.
“A huge mistake is what it is,” Barrows muttered in reply, sucking on his teeth. “It’s a rune. And it’s outlawed.”
“Why?”
Cody suddenly raised a hand. “It’s a symbol used by a group that hasn’t figured out the war is over.”
Quinn swapped looks with Cody who was staring off into the distance. She was about to ask him how he knew that, but Cody turned his eyes toward the ground and shook his head. She looked back to Barrows. “Thought you said the resistance was finished.”
“It is. Completely gonzo. I’m talkin’ about something else entirely.”
Without uttering another word, Barrows struck out around the side of the wooden building. Quinn followed and watched Barrows slip into the building through what passed for a rear door, a length of sodden plywood wrapped in plastic that was situated under an awning.
“You sure we want to enter this den of inequity?” Hayden asked.
“You got any better ideas?”
“I don’t trust that sonofabitch,” Hayden said, referencing Barrows.
“Neither do I. But I’d rather take my chances with him, than with them,” she replied, lifting her chin toward the sky. Everyone could see several drones circling in the distance. The others followed Barrows into the building. Cody made a move after them and Quinn grabbed his wrist and pulled him aside. “Are you okay?”
Cody shivered and ran a hand through his matted hair. “Do I look like I’m okay?”
She tried to hug him and he pushed her back.
“I can help you,” she said.
“I wish that was true,” he replied, his eyes red-rimmed. “There’s something … something inside me.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, Quinn, but I’m scared.”
They embraced and Quinn felt him trembling like a child. “What happened up there?” she whispered. “What really happened on the time ship?”
“He came to me,” Cody whispered. “The Potentate appeared and with him came revelation. I don’t know how, but he made me do his bidding. He showed me things.”
“What?”
“The end of the world.”
“But we can still change everything, can’t we? You said it yourself. There are loops, parallel worlds. The whole goddamn thing can be altered, can’t it?”
“There’s some truth in that,” Cody offered, slowly nodding. “But it’s equally true that it is appointed unto men to die once, and then comes the judgment.”
“What judgment is coming, Cody?”
Cody’s mouth dropped open and an expression came over him, the kind of wide-eyed gape that Quinn imagined had to be stamped on the faces of those who’d just seen the visage of God.
Cody squeezed her hand and then headed toward the building as Quinn followed. She reached the door first and pulled it open and was immediately greeted by a wall of smoke which burned her eyes and caused her nostrils to curl up. Batting away the smoke, she could see that the building’s interior had been sectioned off with plywood and moldering sections of fiber-board. There were people everywhere, shooting the shit, eating, drinking, engaging in games of chance. Barrows slapped palms with several of the building’s inhabitants, before pointing to a cubicle at the back.
He marched forward and through a curtain of sparkly beads. Inside, seated in front of an old card table was a skinny white guy in his mid-twenties who wore dark wraparounds and oversized headphones, a thick gold chain around his neck jangling as he grooved to some tunes that only he could hear. Quinn watched him beat out a rhythm on the table with a pair of paint brushes while weighing small piles of what looked like metal scrap on a set of heavy scales.
Barrows turned to Quinn, Hayden and the others. “You wanted to lie low didn’t you? Well, this is about as low as you can go.” He stabbed a finger at the white guy manning the scales. “That’s my boy Matty Laughlin over there. Everyone just calls him ‘Locks.’”
Locks noticed the group and removed the headphones and turned. He smiled crookedly at Barrows who tossed him his rucksack. “Damn, Barrows, you picked up some strays again, huh?
“They ain’t strays,” Barrows answered. “They say they’re Marines.”
Locks snorted at this, smirking, lowering his wraparounds. “Yeah, and I’m a Chinese jet pilot.”
Locks removed certain objects from Barrows rucksack, and weighed them on the scales. “Little light.”
“It’s all I could find ‘fore the scuds arrived.”
Locks tensed. “They follow you back?”
“The bugs are always following us one way or another,” Barrows replied.
Locks nodded. “I heard that.” He gestured to Quinn and the others. “But we need to play it cool, so your friends are gonna have to bounce.”
“We just need a place to regroup for a while,” Hayden said.
“So do it somewhere else,” Locks said with a wave of his hand.
“We don’t have anywhere else to go,” Milo added.
Locks shook his head. “This ain’t open to negotiation. You’re strangers here, and strangers got a way of getting the attention of the Viceroy.”
“We’re not afraid of him,” Hayden said.
“Well, you should be. That fucker’s a man beast. Eight feet tall and big as life. Ain’t you heard how he got to be where he is? He single-handedly blew up a bunch of alien bases out west. Bastard had half his face taken off in the blast, but still didn’t go down. The Potentate himself was so impressed that he seated him at his right hand.”
“He had his face burned during a firefight on a bridge,” Quinn said.
“Bullshit.”
“His vehicle was hit and went up in flames. The fire melted off half of his face.”
Locks barked a nasty laugh. “And how the hell would you know all that?”
“Because I was there. And I’m the one that did it to him.”
Locks removed his dark shades and smirked. “No offense, sweetheart, but you don’t look like you’re capable of even making me a sandwich, which I might ask you to do for me, by the way.”
“Just make sure it’s a knuckle-sandwich,” Quinn hissed.
Her gaze smoked into Locks’ and then two things happened almost at once: Locks reached under his table and Quinn reached for Locks. She grabbed Locks’ wrist just as he’d unsheathed a hidden knife. Locks yelped and dropped
the knife.
“Still want me to make that sandwich for you?” Quinn asked.
“At ease,” Hayden said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m totally at ease, Gunny,” Quinn replied, her eyes never leaving Locks. “Just gonna snap this joker’s wrist in half, real quick.”
Renner knelt and hoisted the dropped knife in his robotic hand. He manipulated the levers, shattering the knife’s blade before angling them at Locks’ groin like a crab’s pincers.
“Guess what I’m going for next,” Renner said.
Locks gulped and manufactured a huge smile. “Chill, man, chill. I ain’t gonna mess with a dude who’s got a Swiss army knife for a hand. Besides, it’s like I always say. A friend of Barrows’ is a friend of mine.”
Quinn released Locks’ wrist. Locks stood and sized everybody up. “Ya’all can stay, but you can’t be mingling around up here. I don’t care who you are. If some of the scud spies catch sight of you, they’re gonna torch this place in a hot second.”
“So where are we supposed to go?” Milo asked.
“Outta here!” Locks suddenly shouted, bobbing his head in every direction as if he was speaking into a series of concealed microphones. “Like I said, strangers aren’t welcome around here! The resistance is gone and the Syndicate rules over everything! Long live the Potentate and the Viceroy!”
Locks reached back beyond the table and began flipping a series of switches on several small electrical devices. White noise filled the space. Before Quinn could ask what was going on, Locks had dropped to his haunches and moved aside a filthy floor rug. Visible in a sheen of dust, was a metal ring.
Locks grabbed the ring and pulled back to reveal an opening, a door into the floor. Barrows grabbed the edge of the door and the two pulled it back to reveal a set of wooden steps that descended to a darkened, bunker-like space. What Quinn presumed was a basement under the building.
Locks looked to Quinn and pointed at the shadow-shrouded steps. He grinned darkly. “Ladies first.”
Syndicate Wars_Empire Rising Page 11
